New Web based Sample Applications

One of the key technological directions for Tizen is to enable a full web based environment for running applications. In order for this to hold true for IVI targeted applications there needs to be some additional innovation adding capabilities like:

Making it possible for a driver to interact with an application with minimal distraction (i.e. using voice or easily reachable input devices to navigate the application without having to stop paying attention to the road)

Providing access to vehicle specific data

Note that for this current preview we do not have the Tizen WebRuntime integrated and functional, so to enable early experimental work in the above areas we have a couple of temporary services that expose native capabilities directly over a websocket. Providing a product-ready API means solving more then just raw access to functionality (like for example providing a sustainable security model around each method), and the temporary websocket servers do not attempt solve this.

The following applications are provided in order to start experimenting with these concepts and eventually help to prove a good API that we will then implement via a Tizen WRT Plugin:

WebDialer

This is a very rudimentary dialer application that depends on a backend server called sockdrawer to implement an experimental Tizen.Device.Call API. The application does not attempt to expose a UI for pairing with a phone, so the expectation is that a phone is manually paired before running the application. If the app is run without a phone paired, or without the paired device in range, then an error dialog is displayed indicating that no modems were found.

To run this application open the terminal application and type:

$ webskeleton -f file:///usr/share/webdialer/index.html

Pressing the escape key will exit the application.

Moute

This is a very simple mapping application utilizing the open street maps service and depending on the remotecontrol backend daemon to provide access to GPS data over an experimental API.

To run this application open the terminal application and type:

$ webskeleton -f file:///usr/share/moute/index.html

Pressing the escape key will exit the application.

InCarCinema

This is an application that will connect to the remotecontrol backend daemon to provide media library access for finding local file URI's to all content on the system, and then provide a simple UI for playing that content using the standard HTML5 video element.

To run this application open the terminal application and type:

$ webskeleton -f file:///usr/share/incarcinema/index.html

Pressing the escape key will exit the application.

GhostCluster

This is a test application for exercising an experimental API for accessing vehicle information data from the automotive-message-broker. The automotive-message-broker provides a sink plugin that we configure in this release that provides a websocket interface.

To run this application open the terminal application and type:

$ webskeleton -f file:///usr/share/GhostCluster/index.html

Pressing the escape key will exit the application.

SayThis

This application is provided as a way of experimenting with an API to expose text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities. The application accesses TTS via the remotecontrol daemon which in turn uses the open source festival TTS implementation.

To run this application open the terminal application and type:

$ webskeleton -f file:///usr/share/saythis/index.html

Pressing the escape key will exit the application.

DoThis

This application is provided as a way of experimenting with speech-to-text (STT) capabilities. The application accesses STT via the remotecontrol daemon which in turn uses the open source festival STT implementation.

To run this application open the terminal application and type:

$ webskeleton -f file:///usr/share/dothis/index.html

Pressing the escape key will exit the application.

Remote controller

One general area of innovation around IVI is finding ways to allow a user to use their mobile phones and tablets to interact with the in-car systems. The remote control app experiments with the concept of using a mobile phone as a type of remote control device, where the user takes advantage of the bigger screen in the car, but navigates applications using the mobile phone since reaching the big screen might be problematic and non-optimal (i.e. the users seat belt makes the screen out of reach or even if they can stretch out to touch the screen then its difficult to use as the car is bumping down the road.)

This very early experiment is working on the assumption that there is an internal secure network that the phone can access to allow developers to focus on the specific problem of providing a UI for controlling the device and also discovering what needs to be exposed on the IVI system to make it possible.

To start this application connect the IVI system to a local network and then connect another device with a webbrowser (like a laptop or smartphone) to the same network, and from the second device open a webpage pointing to http://YOUR-IVI-SYSTEM-IPADDRESS:8080

Workarounds

VMD1000 (VTC1000/VMC1000 LVDS Display) touchscreen swapped X/Y axis

The touchscreen X/Y signals on the VMD1000 are swapped such that moving your finger vertcally moves the mouse horizontally etc. For X11 this can be worked around in the xorg.conf file by adding "SWAPAXES" keyword. Here is an example entry in a .conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d for the VMD1000 touchscreen:

Issues have been reported trying to calibrate the touchscreen to get the correct alignment between finger and mouse movements. See Bug TIVI-215 Calibration of the touchscreen can be adjusted in the X11 xorg conf file using the 'Option "Calibration"' keyword. For example: